Learn to Choose Something other than Depression to Think About

I’m afraid that one of the problem with the burgeoning diagnoses of depression we have been witnessing is that doctors are not observing depression itself but depression exposed to their stereotypical questions. Instead of the nature of depression determining the measurements they are taking, the measurements they are taking are determining, for the researchers, the nature of depression.

In a way this is not so different from physics. The difference is that the physicist takes this into consideration and call their ideas theories. Psychiatrists cannot call their ideas theories because they cannot prescribe a medicine to treat a theory. They can only prescribe a medicine to treat an illness. What this means is that as far as depression is concerned, the doctors are treating a structure without knowing what it is the structure of. This is the reason the pills ultimately don't work.

Thousands of people take their depression into hospitals such as Kaiser Permanente to be “cured. In Kaiser, for instance, they are given a brochure that states flatly: “No one knows exactly what happens in the brain to cause depression, but brain chemicals called neurotransmitters are probably involved.” And then the patients are given chemicals to alter the balance of these neurotransmitters. 

Truth escapes us when we look to find only what our own study is already set up to see. The study of depression is based on a causal relationship between brain chemistry and depression. There is other research that shows a causal relationship between behavior and brain chemistry. Why is this being swept aside as incidental? Because generally speaking, you can’t prescribe medicine for a person’s behavior. Behavior is a matter of choice and to deprive a person from being able to make a choice about his own behavior makes someone very low functioning.

            I did not choose depression. Depression happened to me because of my lack of choosing behavior and thinking that was more cheerful and productive. When you are depressed, it is not easy to choose thoughts other than the thought “I am depressed.” But ultimately it is the only thing that really works to get you out of it.